Strange Behavior
by Candaru
Summary: (MAJOR Ghost Trick spoilers!) It's been a few years, and Sissel's Ghost Tricks have grown so strong that he can now "project" his physical form as a human as well as his ghost form. The only problem is, he still acts like a cat. As Valentine's Day approaches, Lynne realizes he needs some tutoring in how to be human. (Platonic Sissel/Lynne, no romo, set post-game, T for safety.)
1. Chapter 1

(A/N: First chapter is super short, they get longer as you go. Absolutely NOTHING in this fic is supposed to be taken romantically, despite it being Valentine's Day-centered and full of affectionate gestures! In fact, my original title for this fic was going to be "Human Affection," but I discarded it because 1. spoilerish and 2. it could easily be taken the wrong way.)

* * *

"Lynne."

"Sissel, I'm busy—"

"LyyynnnNNNNE!"

Lynne yelped in surprise as the grown man standing beside her swiftly knocked a glass vial off the table, watching as it shattered on impact.

"What the heck, Sissel?!"

Sissel blinked slowly and casually. "It was empty."

"That vial still cost MONEY! I'm going to have to pay Inspector Cabenala back for that, you know!" Lynne retorted. Sissel looked confused.

"What's 'money?' You use that word a lot. Why is it so important to you?"

"Ugh…" Lynne groaned and facepalmed. She didn't have time for this right now. She still had to finish submitting her report on the (attempted) affects of neutralizing Temsik, which was a lot of scientific jargon that was really better suited to Kamila's brain than her own, but if she let her younger roommate surpass her then…

"Hey, Lynne. Lynne."

"What?!"

"Pay attention to me."

This short one minute of conversation basically summed up what the entire evening had been like: Sissel, like always, was carelessly clueless, and Lynne didn't have much patience for his antics.

Of course, in the back of her mind she knew it wasn't _really_ Sissel's fault. After all, as his slit green eyes and furry tail reminded everyone, he was still, in fact, a cat. Although his Ghost Tricks had grown stronger over time, eventually giving him the ability to "project" his physical image like he did his ghost, they hadn't provided him with any useful information about being human. And nobody really had any time to teach him, either, what with the Temsik cover-ups still being carried out and a bunch of other boring legal work regarding Yomiel getting out of prison soon. But then again…

Lynne sighed as Sissel knocked on the door, then looked back at her patiently.

"Sissel, you don't have to knock."

"You told me not to scratch."

"Yes, but you can open the door _yourself_ now, you know."

Sissel's eyes slowly grew wide as he processed this fact. His tail flicked back and forth like a whip while he carefully turned the doorknob with both hands. Then he turned back around, expression deadpan.

"I knew I could do that."

Lynne smirked. "Uh-huh. You go have fun, now. I have to finish up these boring experiment replications."

Sissel saluted (one of the few human motions he'd picked up on his own) and started to leave. Then he hesitated and turned back around.

"Lynne?"

 _"Yes?"_

His tail twitched. "Is tomorrow… 'love day?'"

"Huh? Oh, Valentine's Day? Yeah, I guess it is. I'd completely forgotten. Why?"

"Missile told me about it. He says it smells wonderful but you never share any of the food with him." He said this as a challenging statement, looking at Lynne like she'd better have a darn good explanation for why her family had been holding out on his friend.

"That's because chocolate is poisonous to dogs," Lynne explained. "It would kill— wait— ohh, no you don't!"

Sissel, with a cheshire-cat like grin, had already fled the room, almost definitely in search of some chocolate to sneak to Missile. For being species who were supposed to be rivals, those two got into some serious mischief together— including but not limited to sneaking out at midnight, guilting Kamila into not giving them their baths, and playing "how many dangerous situations can we throw Missile into before he's killed and Sissel has to use his almighty powers to bring him back to life?"

A bout of excited barking from the next room over told Lynne that the last item on the list was probably being carried out even as she mixed her test tube solutions. Oh, brother— and it was already time for Detective Jowd to come home. They'd probably leave a mess right before he arrived and Lynne did _not_ want to be the one to clean it up.

Maybe it WAS high time she gave Sissel a few lessons on how to be a proper human.


	2. Chapter 2

Valentine's Day at the Jowd household was a family affair. "Family affairs" often included not only Detective Jowd and his family, but Lynne, Inspector Cabenala (who always came late), Amelie and her parents, a few of Jowd's good friends from down at the station, and of course the household pets.

The day went like this: the guests all came over and brought presents of vegetable trays and chocolate boxes— whatever they could afford— and set them on the table as an offering for the party. Then "little angel Amelie" would run off with Kamila to play, Jowd and his friends would strike up a conversation about politics with the Justice Minister (Amelie's father), and the mothers of the two little girls would get into a heated debate about literature before it was time for dinner. Normally in this routine, Lynne played the part of watching over the girls while they played: Amelie would bring her porcelain dolls and Kamila would get out her handmade ones, and both of them would happily play together and pretend that Missile was a giant monster who the dolls had to defeat by tying up with rope (bits of string from Kamila's craft box).

However, this year things were a little different. Lynne was requested to come talk with Detective Jowd, leaving Missile to fend for himself against the onslaught of the tiny fake humans. At first this made her feel very grown-up, but as she approached the table and remembered the ages of Jowd and his friends, it actually made her feel quite young and foolish.

"Detective Jowd? You wanted to see me?"

Jowd turned around from the hearty pile of appetizers on his plate. "Ah, Lynne! Sit down, sit down. How's the report coming?"

Lynne sat down and bit her lip. "Um… well… I still kind of have a lot to finish. The experiment replications are going fine, though! ExceptforavialIbrokeonaccident."

Jowd cocked his head. "What was that?"

"I broke a vial on accident," Lynne muttered, glancing away. "I mean. It wasn't really _me,_ but—"

"Did she let the cat into the experiment room again?!" one of Jowd's coworkers exclaimed. All the men turned to look at the black cat who was perched atop the climbing case, grooming himself without a care in the world. He didn't even seem to notice the five pairs of eyes glaring in his direction.

"You oughta put that thing on a leash," one of the men said.

"Hah! Have you ever even tried putting a cat on a leash, Bailey?" another retorted. "Especially a kitten! I've got three kittens at home and just trying to heard them into the same room is near impossible."

"Seems like that little fella's been a kitten for years now. I figure he ain't a kitten at all, just a teacup cat. Like one of them little doggies my wife keeps asking me for."

"A-HEM!" Jowd coughed, bringing the attention back to the table. "Lynne, the broken vial was not your fault. I know Sissel is… very good at sneaking into places." The underlying statement was that he was fully aware Sissel could slip through walls at a moment's notice, unlocking doors for his body to trot right through. "But I gathered us here to talk about the progress of neutralizing the radiation from you-know-what, so let's hear how the rest of your reports have been coming…"

Lynne tried to stay awake during the next part of the meeting, she really did. But the other officers didn't even know what Temsik WAS, beyond a "highly dangerous radioactive substance," and the way they droned on and on was practically killing her. Then she felt something nudge her, and she looked down to see a furry little ball of black rubbing its head against her leg.

"Uhh… Detective Jowd, I think Sissel wants to be let out."

Jowd noticed the look in her eyes and waved her off with a look of understanding. "Sure, you do that. And while you're at it, see if there are enough steaks out back for everyone. Can't have this lot getting hungry, now can we?"

A few of the policemen laughed and raised their glasses with "here here!"s and "if you're going to the store, grab some potatoes, too!"s. Lynne leaped up from the table and grabbed her car keys, fully intending to go shopping whether the men needed it or not. The kitten leapt gracefully onto the empty chair, then the table, then her shoulder, sticking a paw against her face as if it would help him balance or something.

Once out of the house and safely inside the car, the kitten was engulfed in blue flames before re-appearing as the spitting image of someone who was currently sitting in a prison cell.

"Sissel?"

"Yes?"

"That form is fine for the house, but you can't walk around as Yomiel. If anyone recognized you, they'd think he broke out or something. And you can't keep the tail, either."

Sissel pouted and broke out into another burst of blue flames. He emerged in a new form; spiked black hair that ended in a tail-shaped ponytail and a red bandana atop all-black clothing made him easily recognizable, even as a human. Lynne raised an eyebrow.

"That was fast. When did you come up with that?"

Sissel ignored her question and instead pointed forward to the dashboard. "Drive, human."


	3. Chapter 3

"Aw, FUDGE yeah!" Lynne exclaimed as she ran up to a Valentine's Day display. "They've got fudge!"

"What's the big deal about this stuff?" Sissel said, walking up with his hands in his pockets. "It smells like raw sugar. Ugh."

"It's this AMAZING new form of chocolate. We're getting some," Lynne said, picking up a box. "Now which way is the meat, again…? I have to pick up a few more steaks for Jowd's crew."

"Now, MEAT, I can understand." Sissel grinned and followed Lynne as they walked down the aisles. "Meat smells like juicy tenderness and all things good in the world."

A moment later, Lynne felt something bumping her.

"Sissel, what are you doing?" It was a rhetorical question; he was rubbing his hair against her shoulder. Lowering her voice, Lynne added, "I thought cats scratched themselves with their _feet_ , like dogs."

Sissel looked offended, for some reason. "We do. I wasn't scr—"

"Oh! There it is!" Lynne ran over to the meat case, and Sissel followed, licking his lips. "Let's see, we don't need ribs, we don't need pork— here we are. This steak looks good. And this one, or maybe this one…"

Lynne took her choice of food very seriously, as she'd been taught to do by her mentor. Jowd was the best griller in the country, as far as she was concerned, and he'd always stressed the importance of selecting the right meats at the best quality.

"Well, whooooo do we have here?"

Lynne spun around from her careful meat selecting to see a familiar man in a white coat, brandishing a bouquet of roses.

"Inspector Cabenala!" her face lit up. "It's good to see you!"

"Happy Valentine's Day, baby!" he exclaimed, holding out the bouquet. Lynne giggled.

"Did you pay for those yet?" she asked, noting the small tag on the bottom. He paused, then whipped the bouquet behind his back.

"Well, I didn't expect to run into you here before I did, now did IIIIII?" he asked. Then he noticed the other man standing beside Lynne. "And Sissel! Is that you? You look absolutely dapper!"

Sissel mocked the Inspector's signature bow. "Merely keeping an eye on the lady."

Cabenala laughed loudly. "And boy, how she needs it! Have you even noticed how many men here have been looking in your direction, Lynne?"

Lynne actually hadn't noticed, being too caught up in her thoughts about food, but now that she looked around she could spy the familiar jealous faces of several men who were wandering the store without partners.

"They're just jealous of my radiant beauty," Lynne said, shrugging it off. "Cabenala, did you have some more shopping to do or did you come all the way to the store just to pick some flowers for me?"

"I'm offended," Cabenala said, the smile on his face unbreakable. " _Some_ of these are for the host of the party." With the skill of a magician, he produced a single yellow rose from behind Sissel's ear. Sissel made a loud hissing sound in alarm.

"Well, we'd better head to the checkout," Lynne said. "Meet you at the party in a few?"

"Until we meet again, baaaaby!" Cabenala laughed, and strutted out of sight while throwing out random dance moves at strangers. Lynne noticed that the stares of the other men in the store had grown thoroughly confused. She wondered if they were gawking at the whole party, or just at Cabenala. Probably just at Cabenala.

"That reminds me," Sissel suddenly said. "People usually give gifts today, don't they? I mean, other than Mr. White Coat?"

Lynne nodded. "It's traditional to give gifts on Valentine's Day, yeah. Why? Did you want to get a gift for someone?"

"I already did," Sissel replied, frowning. "But he didn't seem to like it very much. I brought Jowd a mouse this morning, still alive and everything, and he went and released it into the backyard!" He shuffled his feet.

"Well… you know humans have different ideas of good gifts, right?" Lynne said.

"He's a scientist! You said scientists did tests on mice!"

"He's a _detective_ ," Lynne corrected. Sissel raised an eyebrow.

"What's the difference? You're a detective, and you were doing a test yesterday."

Lynne laughed wearily. "I'll explain it to you in the car. For now, let's go get some potatoes and checkout."

Sissel followed silently as Lynne finished her shopping and headed to the checkout counter. He was silent a lot, so she almost forgot he was with her until she noted her reflection in a heart-shaped bauble and commented, "Yikes, look at my hair. Forgetting my radiant beauty, I look like a mess today."

And then Sissel licked her hand.

"ACK!" Lynne jumped back, startling Sissel and several other people around her. Quickly regaining her composure so the onlookers wouldn't be suspicious, she lowered her voice and hissed, "What was that for?!"

A flicker of hurt flashed in Sissel's eyes. "You— you said you looked like a mess. I was offering to groom you."

It took Lynne a moment to put together that thought process, but when she finally did she started to laugh.

"Oh, Sissel— oh, boy. Okay, forget about the scientist thing, we're going to have a different talk in the car. There's some stuff I need to explain to you. But until then, no more licking me, or anyone else, got it?"

Sissel looked confused, but nodded as the line for checkout moved forward.

"Aw, look at you two!" the old lady at the register exclaimed. "We have a special discount for lovebirds today, you know." Her eyes twinkled, and Lynne's practical mind sprang into action. She quickly took Sissel's hand in her own.

"Yup, this is Sissel! My boyfriend. Friend who is a boy. Whom I like. Romantically."

"Lynne, what are you doing?" Sissel hissed, motioning with his head towards Lynne's hand. "You're always complaining about—"

"Later," Lynne mouthed to Sissel. He rolled his eyes as Lynne paid for the food. On the way out, she fist-pumped with her free hand and grinned up at him.

"Haha! Did you see that? We got a discount!"

A blank stare.

"It means we saved money," she explained.

"Still don't know what money is. Can you let go of my hand now?"

"If you insist," Lynne said, dropping the smooth pale hand. (She vaguely wondered why he'd chosen that skin tone, but perhaps he was just modeling himself off the people he was most familiar with.) "But hand-holding is a sign of affection, you know."

Sissel paused outside the car and cocked his head. "Affection?"

"Yeah. You know, love. Missile called today 'love day,' right? That's because today is a day we humans express our love for each other. How we care for the people in our lives." She paused as she got inside. "Well, I guess some humans only show love to one other person, but that's kind of dumb."

"Is that because of the romance thing?" Sissel asked. Lynne laughed. Apparently he'd been paying attention when she rambled about this before.

"Yes, because of the romance thing. But get in the car, we've got to get these steaks back to the party so Jowd can prepare them."

Sissel did as he was told and Lynne revved up the engine.

This boy needed some serious tutoring.

* * *

(A/N: I never even considered aroace Lynne until I wrote this fic but here we are)


	4. Chapter 4

"Human lesson number one! The first thing you need to know is the types of gifts humans consider appropriate." Lynne turned her clicker on as she pulled out of the parking lot. "Mice and any other animals are a no-no— they don't smell very good."

"I'm right here, you know," Sissel teased. Lynne stuck her tongue out.

"Anyway, chocolates and flowers are traditional for Valentine's Day, but other acceptable gifts include money and jewelry. For girls, anyway. Or Inspector Cabenala."

"You keep mentioning that money thing," Sissel said. "What is it?"

"Uh, right. Money is what you use to buy everything else in the world."

Sissel blinked. "What does it do?"

"It doesn't do anything. You just… buy stuff with it." Lynne suddenly noticed the light coming up had turned red and slammed on the breaks.

"I don't get it. It's useless, but people give you food for it? And those other things?"

"Right," Lynne said. "Like flowers."

"What do you do with flowers?"

Lynne paused. "Uhh… decorate, I guess? Some people like the way they smell."

Sissel looked out the window, resting his chin on his hand. "I'd rather have food."

"Me too," Lynne laughed. "But don't look a gift horse in the— actually, idioms are probably a bad idea right now. Moving onto lesson number two!"

"Wasn't money lesson number two?"

"I'm the teacher, Sissel. Lesson number two, hand-holding! Humans hold hands sometimes to show affection."

Sissel cocked his head. "Why?"

"Uhh…" Why did human behavior make so much less sense when it was being questioned by a cat? "Because it feels nice, I guess. Also, when people hold hands in public, they're announcing their relationship to everyone around them."

Sissel perked up. "Like claiming ownership?"

"Um, kind of, I guess? Like announcing, 'this is a human that I love and want to protect.' Or something like that." Lynne turned the steering wheel, not looking over at the 'student' she was teaching, and then felt a hand on her own.

Oh. Okay, that was adorable.

"Uh, Sissel?"

"Yeah?"

"Not while I'm driving. It's kind of dangerous."

Sissel blinked and slunk down slightly in his seat, withdrawing his hand. "…oh. Sorry."

"But I appreciate the motion," Lynne added, smiling over at him. The green-eyed boy (she never really knew whether to refer to Sissel as a man or a boy— he seemed to go back and forth between the two) blinked and then glanced away.

"Um, lesson number three," Lynne said, clearing her throat. "Licking is definitely a no-no. We groom ourselves in the bath, remember? So, uh, no doing that."

"Baths are an atrocity that should never have been invented," Sissel muttered, staring out the window again. Lynne laughed.

"If you and Missile didn't get into so much trouble, maybe you wouldn't need baths so often. Remember the time you tried to teach him how to jump a fence and he ended up launching himself into the mud?"

Lynne saw a small, amused smile in the reflection of the glass. "Heh. That was fun."

"Anyways, it's cute when you two lick each other or us as animals, but you can't do it as a human. The human equivalent of that would be a kiss on the cheek."

Sissel turned, interested. "A kiss? I think I've heard Kamila use that word when Missile licks her, though."

"Well, yes, sometimes we call those doggy kisses. But a human kiss is just pressing your lips to someone else, usually on the cheek or the hand."

"What does it do?" Sissel asked curiously. "Doesn't seem like it'd get very much dust off."

"It doesn't really 'do' anything. It's just a way of showing affection."

Sissel huffed. "Why do you have so many behaviors that don't make sense? You give each other 'money' that doesn't do anything and buy useless items like 'flowers' with it, and to claim ownership of each other you have the strangest rituals."

"Lesson number three is that you have to stop using the phrase 'claiming ownership,'" Lynne laughed, "or people will take it the wrong way and call the police."

"Mr. Bailey hates it when people call him," Sissel noted.

"Yeah — ugh, hold on, crazy driver trying to merge," Lynne interrupted, pressing on the gas. People sometimes. They really _did_ have strange habits.

Thankfully, they arrived safely back at the house before anyone could put another dent in the old, beat-up car. Lynne put the grocery bags on her arms and as she was walking up to the door, Sissel tugged on her sleeve.

"Lynne?"

"Yeah? You know you have to turn back into a cat before you go inside or everyone will freak out, right?"

"I know," Sissel said. Then, hesitantly, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Lynne's cheek.

"I'm happy you're my human," he blurted out. Lynne blushed and had to stop herself from 'awwwww'ing him away.

Instead, she teased, "Isn't Yomiel your human? Or Jowl, until Yomiel gets out?"

"They're both mine, too," Sissel replied. "You're all my humans. I own all of you." Then with a flash of blue, he turned back into a cat and darted inside as Jowl opened the door.

"Lynne! You brought the meats!" he exclaimed happily. Several men behind him echoed in chorus, "You brought the meats!"

"And it looks like someone else finally showed up, too," he noted, pointing to a flashy car that pulled up behind the others. "Late to the party as always, huh?"

"Yeah," Lynne laughed with a smile. She looked inside, where a chorus of what was probably a drinking song (with modified lyrics for the presence of Kamila and Amelie) was going around the table. Someone had opened up a box of cheap chocolate candy and was stirring it into their beer, almost undoubtably on a bet. And loud barking rose up as Sissel trotted over to Missile with the good news that there would be enough meat that people would feed them scraps under the table.

Lynne liked being a part of this family.

Even if the humans _did_ act strange sometimes.


End file.
